Allen Bird Club soars to 100th anniversary

The Republican | Don TreegerJanet Orcutt, current President of the Allen Bird Club and George Kingston, longtime member of the club, stand at the entrance of the Fannie Stebbins Wildlife Refuge in Longmeadow.

By GEORGE KINGSTON

SPRINGFIELD - In the early years of the 20th century, an awakening interest in natural history and especially the study of birds spread across the country and took root in Springfield.

During the autumn of 1911, Grace Pettis Johnson, the director of the Springfield Museum of Natural History, and Fannie Stebbins, the supervisor of science education in the Springfield School Department, began discussing the formation of a club for the study of wild birds in the area.

On the afternoon of Jan. 8, 1912, they met with a group of amateur naturalists whom they had invited to the museum and organized the Springfield Bird Club. The purpose of the club was “to attract, conserve and study birds.” They elected the Rev. Herbert Thayer, pastor of the Park Memorial Baptist Church, as their first president.

Two weeks later, the club met again and members took their first action for bird conservation by composing a letter to the Springfield newspapers in support of a bill before the state Legislature which would require the licensing of cats.

Then, on Feb. 12, they held their first public lecture, bringing professor C.S. Hodge, of Clark University, from Worcester by train to talk on “How to Make the Most of Our Bird Life.”

Soon afterwards, they renamed themselves the Allen Bird Club, in honor of Springfield native and prominent ornithologist Joel A. Allen, the curator of birds at the American Museum of Natural History.

From this modest beginning, the club has continued to study and record the comings and goings of birds for 100 years, making it the oldest continually active bird club in Massachusetts.

The club was founded to bring together the people who had been independently keeping records of birds and reporting them to Johnson, who collated and preserved them. Using these records, she updated the book “The Birds of Springfield,” originally published in 1901 by Robert O. Morris, the Springfield clerk of courts. A second edition was issued in 1911, and she would go on to publish five more editions, the last in 1949. Today, Seth Kellogg continues this work.

In the early days of the club, field trip destinations were limited by the available transportation, with the members often taking street cars to get to good birding spots. Trips further afield might involve a journey by train, but little by little, automobiles became available and the members were able to explore the countryside. This lack of mobility was balanced by the availability of excellent bird habitat close to home. Allen Street and Springfield’s Sixteen Acres neighborhood were largely rural at that time, and their woods and fields were filled with bird song in the spring.

Some of the field trip destinations, like Forest Park, Longmeadow Flats and Agawam, are still visited by the club today. Others, like Calla Shasta, the Springfield Yacht and Canoe Club’s camp on the Connecticut River in Agawam, are now gone forever. On these early trips, the members dressed formally, the men in suits and ties, the women in long, full dresses.

The club grew rapidly and by the end of 1912 had more than 100 members, including the naturalist and children’s author Thornton Burgess, Rachel Phelps, Robert Morris and Robert Sherwood. Samuel Elliot, a drama professor at Smith College and amateur ornithologist who co-wrote “The Birds of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts,” which was for many years the bible for bird watchers in this part of the state, was elected an honorary member.

The original dues were 50 cents a year. This was raised to $1 in 1922. The dues today are only $12.

In 1917, the Allen Bird Club joined the New England Federation of Natural History Societies and in September 1918 hosted a meeting of the regional group that included not only bird clubs, but naturalist, mineral, wildflower and other societies.

During its first year, the club established its tradition of holding both evening meetings with speakers and field trips, with most of the trips being in the spring and summer. However, the club did hold a “Christmas Count” on Christmas morning, 1912, and sent its results in to the magazine Bird Lore which compiled the national results. The tradition of participating in the national Christmas Count then lapsed until 1951 when it began again and continues today.

Over the years, many famous speakers have addressed the club, including the artist and field guide author Roger Tory Peterson, who visited the club twice as part of the National Audubon screen tour series that the club hosted from 1968 to 1995. Others of note included author Burgess, Massachusetts state ornithologist Edward Forbush, and prominent ornithologists Alan Cruikshank, Owen Sewell Pettingill, Richard Pough, Don Kroodsma and Wayne Petersen.

Among the birds found and reported by Allen Bird Club members were numerous records of rare birds. These include the third New England and second Massachusetts records for the scissor-tailed flycatcher, a bird from the desert Southwest. It was sighted by Fannie Stebbins on the farm of George Bartlett, “Fruit Acres,” located in West Springfield, in 1933. After many local birders had observed it, the bird was shot and collected by Harvard ornithology professor Ludlow Griscom. The skin is now in the Boston Science Museum.

Other first regional records include: western grebe, by Albert Dietrich in 1934; glossy ibis by Fannie Stebbins in 1926; eurasian widgeon by Sam Eliot in 1931; the second record for Barrow’s goldeneye, by Alice Bowen at Calla Shasta in 1923 and the third by Albert Dietrich in 1935; yellow rail by Ida Wemple in 1918; and Baird’s sandpiper, by Sam Eliot in 1933.

Perhaps the largest undertaking by the Allen Bird Club was the establishment of the Fannie Stebbins Wildlife Refuge in Longmeadow.

The idea for creating a refuge was discussed among the members beginning in 1949. Two years later, even before a suitable site had been selected, the club voted to name the sanctuary after its founder, Fannie Adele Stebbins, who had recently passed away.

Having selected a name, they then appointed a committee to find a location. The committee settled on the area of Longmeadow known as “the flats,” a flood plain along the Connecticut River. The land was inexpensive and contained important breeding habitat for many different birds including wood ducks and bald eagles.

Fund-raising started immediately and, in 1952, the club was able to purchase 59 acres and lease and additional 48 acres. Creative fund-raising helped, including the sale of fill from land along Pondside Road to the state highway department for the construction of Interstate 91.

Not only did the sale provide funds, it created the ponds along the road that now host a wide variety of waterfowl and herons. Over the years more land has been added, including 50 acres purchased with a legacy of $10,000 from club charter member Rachel Phelps.

The refuge is still owned and managed by the club, in cooperation with the town of Longmeadow, which owns a large amount of conservation land nearby.

During the 1950s, the club expanded its range by running bus trips to the Massachusetts and Connecticut coasts in conjunction with the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Laughing Brook Sanctuary. These were all day affairs that had something of a party atmosphere to them, but that also provided club members an opportunity to observe sea birds and shore birds that rarely made their way into Western Massachusetts.

In the 1970s, overnight trips were introduced, not only in Massachusetts, but also to far-flung destinations, such as Cape May, N.J., Monhegan Island, Maine, and the Adirondacks in New York.

Social aspects have always been an important part of the club. In the early days, a Christmas party was held annually at the museum, a tradition that continues in a toned down version even today. In 1968, the first annual banquet was held. But, perhaps the most popular events are the compilation pot luck dinners held after the annual Christmas Count and spring census.

Today the club has 237 members and holds more than 80 field trips a year. The Allen Bird club looks forward eagerly to its next 100 years.

George Kingston, of East Longmeadow, and his wife, Jean Delaney, joined the Allen Bird Club in 1980, shortly after moving here from Ohio. He is a past treasurer and president of the club and currently serves as its webmaster and environmental chair.